I'm not really sure, but isn't JavaJunkies.org supposed to be the Java companion/equivalent to PerlMonks?

As someone who has been on JJ since it's inception - I'll simply say "no". The look and feel is familiar because it's implemented using the Everything engine. That's where all similarities end.

There's never been a large amount of traffic, since most of the users there find their way from here... and perl lovers are usually busy throwing stones at Java - so if it's 1 in 1,000 users that leaks over it's a lot.

That being said, I still enjoy the company of the folks who do bother to go there.

I've noted before that there is no Java "community" in the same sense that we talk about Perl. There are many sites to choose from in terms of forums - with the most notable probably being Sun's own Java Forum. If you were going to compare numbers, that might be the place to start. I believe that they're running their forum on Jive Forums. For what that's worth.

Another site to use for comparison is JavaRanch, which also sees a lot of traffic.

Since PHP is widely used for forums & blogs - you would be hard put to try to get the PHP community (if such an animal exists) to all focus on one web site, when the ever-present temptation to start your own is gnawing at you.

A quick search turned up phpfreaks and devnetwork as two quick examples. I'm sure there are many more, possibly better sites out there too.

So it's likely that this community is destined to fragment - similar to the path of Java developers.

Personally, I don't know that most of the techniques for determining which language is popular & which isn't are anything like accurate. I have read comments by folks at O'Reilly that infer a relationship between the viability of a language & how many books on the subject they've sold lately, for example. While there is something to infer there about how many NEW people are learning a language - (from wood pulp instead of PDF's & FAQ's) - I can't say that it would reflect on the work that I actually get paid for nor the new projects that we do here nor anywhere else. Similarly - I don't know that statistics on forums, number of released patches, nor even new features added can accurately come close to the 'popularity' number we're looking for.

One thing that is inescapable - whatever group of developers you talk to - they are likely to tell you that whatever language THEY use - is the "BEST". This is a discussion I refuse to have since it's about as meaningless as picking out the best guitar player of all time. If you want to talk about best choices for solving a particular problem - then we have something to hotly debate. Otherwise, it's pointless...